Using a Beefy vault comes down to three steps: connect your wallet, deposit, and wait for auto-compounding. The real value is that it saves you from manually claiming rewards and re-staking them over and over. After you deposit, you receive a receipt token called a mooToken. The strategy contract regularly sells the farmed rewards, swaps them back into the base asset, and deposits again. You do not need to do anything.
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The fee structure is already included in the displayed APY, so you do not need to subtract anything yourself. Withdrawals usually have no extra fees, but a small number of vaults that do not use the "harvest on deposit" mechanism charge a withdrawal fee of up to 0.1%.
Depositing: What You Actually Receive
After you find the vault you want in the Beefy app, connect your wallet and click deposit. You may deposit LP tokens or a single asset, depending on whether the vault supports ZAP. Once the deposit is complete, a token starting with "moo" will appear in your wallet. That is your deposit receipt.
The mooToken itself earns yield. Its price rises as the vault strategy keeps compounding, so you do not need to harvest every day. As long as the mooToken stays in your wallet, your earnings keep building up.
If you use the ZAP V2 tool to simplify deposits—for example, depositing USDC or ETH directly into an LP vault—there is a 0.05% ZAP fee, which is already included in the quote. ZAP V1 is currently free.
Auto-Compounding: What the Strategy Does in the Background
Every Beefy vault has its own strategy contract behind it. The strategy deploys user funds into the underlying farm and regularly runs the cycle of harvesting, swapping, and re-depositing.
Harvest frequency depends on on-chain conditions. On Ethereum mainnet, the rules are: if the vault TVL is above $100,000, it harvests every 3 days. If TVL is between $10,000 and $100,000, it harvests every 15 days. Below $10,000, it becomes a "community harvest," meaning someone must trigger it manually and Beefy does not subsidize the gas. If Ethereum gas prices reach 20 GWei or higher, harvesting pauses because it becomes too expensive.
On low-gas chains like Fantom and Polygon, most vaults use the "harvest on deposit" mechanism. This means the moment you deposit, the strategy first harvests for everyone, compounds the pending rewards, and then processes your deposit. This design prevents "flash deposit" attacks—if someone could deposit right before a harvest and withdraw right after, they could take rewards that belong to others. Vaults that use harvest on deposit do not need a withdrawal fee.
Fees: What Gets Deducted and Where
The main fee on Beefy vaults is a performance fee. It is taken from harvested rewards, not from your principal. The performance fee rate depends on the vault version. Early vaults typically had a structure of 3% to BIFI governance participants, 0.5% to the treasury, 0.5% to the strategist, and 0.05% to the harvest caller. Newer vaults use a performance fee structure of up to 9.5%, with most of it—around 5.4% to 5.75%—going to the Beefy treasury.
The displayed APY already includes these fees. The number you see on the vault page is the net yield after fees, so you do not need to calculate it yourself.
Withdrawal fees exist only on a small number of vaults that do not use harvest on deposit, and they are capped at 0.1%. This fee stays in the vault and is distributed to other depositors. Its purpose is to discourage people from jumping in and out to exploit rewards.
Also, whether you deposit or withdraw, you need to pay the gas fee of the chain you are on. That money goes to miners or validators, not to Beefy.
Withdrawing: How to Get Your Money Back
The withdrawal process mirrors depositing. On the vault page, choose withdraw, enter the amount of mooToken you want to take out or select "all," and confirm the transaction.
If you deposited through the ZAP tool, you can withdraw through ZAP and directly receive the asset you want—for example, USDC instead of LP tokens. If you do not use ZAP, you will receive the vault's underlying asset, and you may need to go to a DEX yourself to split LP tokens or sell the token.
When you withdraw, the amount you receive is usually larger than what you deposited. The extra part is your accumulated yield. If the vault has a withdrawal fee, it will be deducted at this step.
What to Check Before Depositing
Before you deposit, it is a good idea to check a few things on the vault page: the underlying protocol (the "Uses" field, which shows where the vault puts your money), the safety score if there is one, and whether a withdrawal fee exists.
Beefy's automation does not remove the risks of the underlying protocol. If the underlying farm gets hacked, the reward token goes to zero, or the liquidity pool gets drained, the funds in the Beefy vault will also be affected. Beefy itself states that although vaults are audited, the final risk is that investor funds could be stolen or become impossible to withdraw.
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References
- Beefy·Boost, page published or updated: 2026-03-03; checked: 2026-10-08.
- Beefy·Vaults, page published or updated: 2026-01-26; checked: 2026-10-08.
- Beefy·Beefy Fees Breakdown, page published or updated: 2024-03-26; checked: 2026-10-08.
- Beefy·Strategies, page has no update date; checked: 2026-10-08.
- Beefy·Strategy Contract, page published or updated: 2026-03-03; checked: 2026-10-08.
- Hindenrank·Is Beefy Finance Safe? Independent Risk Analysis (2026), page published or updated: 2026-02-21; checked: 2026-10-08.
